Electrickery is coming. GULP!

[Doodle]

Originally Posted by moltuae

Batteries are DC though. You can't store AC.

Yep.

Originally Posted by moltuae

The AC required for the motors is generated by on-board inverters. I don't have the technical details but it's likely that the inverters pulse the DC (thus generating a pseudo AC), and control the power to the motors by adjusting the duty-cycle (on-off ratio), also known as PWM (Pulse Width Modulation).

Even if the vehicle receives an AC charging feed, there will have to be rectification and voltage regulation for charging.

That's pretty much the process it uses. IIRC when charging it runs through an additional rectifier to the traction motor circuit, and then uses the motor's stator for inductance filtering.

Originally Posted by moltuae

For slow-charging vehicles it's practical to have that circuitry on-board. But, if you're fast-charging at hundreds of amps, you're gonna need some pretty big rectifier diodes!

As of when I handed mine back, most fast chargers (excluding the Tesla network) were 43AC/50DC. One assumes they'll have to come up with something new as the chargers increase their rate. Or abandon it completely, which seems quite possible given that they're more or less the only ones that are AC only.